NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned new images captured on approach to its historic orbit insertion at the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn will be the first mission to successfully visit a dwarf planet when it enters orbit around Ceres on Friday, March 6.
"Dawn is about to make history," said Robert Mase, project manager for the Dawn mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "Our team is ready and eager to find out what Ceres has in sto...

Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has successfully integrated the propulsion core and payload module for the fourth Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite nearly five months ahead of schedule. Reaching this critical milestone early accelerates AEHF-4 into its test flow and evidences the continued programmatic success of the nation's most protected military communications satellite system.
Lockheed Martin's AEHF program has been cited as a model for costs savings in government contractin...

One of the most distant galaxies ever observed has provided astronomers with the first detection of dust in such a remote star-forming system and tantalising evidence for the rapid evolution of galaxies after the Big Bang. The new observations have used ALMA to pick up the faint glow from cold dust in the galaxy A1689-zD1 and used ESO's Very Large Telescope to measure its distance.
A team of astronomers, led by Darach Watson from the University of Copenhagen, used the Very Large Telescope's X...

Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) delivered a second Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument to support the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System mission.
The second VIIRS unit will fly aboard the JPSS-1 spacecraft, ensuring continuity of critical weather information currently being provided by its predecessor, the joint NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite launched in 2011.
Comprehensive testing at Ra...

Two Boeing [NYSE: BA] 702SP (small platform) satellites, the first all-electric propulsion satellites to launch, have sent initial signals from space, marking the first step toward ABS, based in Bermuda, and Eutelsat, based in Paris, being able to provide enhanced communication services to their customers. What's more, the satellites were launched as a conjoined stack on a single SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, demonstrating a patented Boeing technology that promises to noticeably reduce launch costs.
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